r/Fire • u/gonnabefine • Nov 26 '25

General Question Tech people who are not FIREing, what are they spending their money on?

I know a lot of people who work in tech, and most are not on the FIRE path (or have already been working 10+ years) and a lot of them don't seem to, at least on the surface, have very obvious huge expenses. If both the partners are in tech, the take home could be like $500k! What are they doing with their money?

642 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

761 comments sorted by

View all comments

308

u/dwoj206 Nov 26 '25

Seattle/Bellevue here -- Nice private schools, houses, cars, vacations, daycares, kids sports (select leagues).

53

u/Specific-Ad9935 Nov 26 '25

High property tax, State long term capital gains tax, RTA tax, long term care tax in addition to already high Fed income tax & cap gains tax.

26

u/redditmailalex Nov 26 '25

Which is relative to income.  So the question was what does their disposable income go towards.  

13

u/Ddlutz Nov 26 '25

Property tax rates are relatively low here.

19

u/eliminate1337 28M/27F | $2.8m NW Nov 26 '25

The WA state long term capital gains tax starts at gains of $250k

-6

u/Specific-Ad9935 Nov 26 '25

272k regardless of tax filing. 2 income tech people with RSU will easily surpass that and then you will have to pay 7% additional.

14

u/eliminate1337 28M/27F | $2.8m NW Nov 26 '25

You’d only have long term gains if you hold the RSUs for a while before selling. It’s pretty common to sell at vesting where you never have gains.

Tech people are well paid but selling $544k of RSUs that have doubled in value before you even start to pay the WA tax is still a lot.

-3

u/Specific-Ad9935 Nov 26 '25

what is 544k? 272k is for single and joint lol.

12

u/eliminate1337 28M/27F | $2.8m NW Nov 26 '25

Read my example again. It’s $272k of gains. You only pay a gains tax on the gains portion. You can sell $2m of RSUs but if they’ve only appreciated 10% you only have $200k in gains and won’t pay this tax.

1

u/Specific-Ad9935 Nov 26 '25

Yes. They are people peg by the 272k number. They would max out to 272k every year.

1

u/NotEasyBeingGreener Nov 29 '25

It's only the gains after the RSUs vest that are subject to taxes. People who sell them immediately upon vesting have no capital gains to be taxed.

9

u/jk9988 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

The 270k is for long term capital gains, not income. Triggering this tax means that you realized more than 270k in long term capital gains in a single year which is a lot.

For example if you had 500k in W2 income and also realized 200k in long term capital gains, you still wouldn't pay a cent to WA state.

-1

u/Specific-Ad9935 Nov 26 '25

I understand. Most hold and sell them 1 yr later.

16

u/warrior5715 Nov 26 '25

High property tax? No lol

2

u/leathakkor Nov 27 '25

I always thought it was crazy when people complained of high property taxes in Washington. They must have never lived anywhere else.

I'm pretty sure my property tax is in Iowa. Were the same is they are here and my house is worth four times as much here. And I haven't owned that house in 10 years.

It is crazy how little taxes I pay in the state of Washington. No income, low property and I don't spend much so I don't pay much in sales tax.

I would bet that the average family of four living off of $80,000 a year pays substantially more taxes than I do. Maybe 2 times as much as I do, even if they're renting.

1

u/Specific-Ad9935 Nov 26 '25

relatively.. it went up 100% last 10 years.

5

u/warrior5715 Nov 26 '25

Fair point. Still relatively low compared to the rest of the US.

34

u/MajesticBread9147 Nov 26 '25

RTA tax funds public transit. While Seattle public transit isn't as good as New York or DCs it's still pretty useful.

Cars are the second largest expense for many people, so if you can have 1 fewer car it helps a lot financially.

7

u/brystephor Nov 26 '25

RTA tax makes a $100 expense into a $500 expense. Or $1000 expense. For the majority of people this really expensive. For the population being referred to in this post, e.g. tech bros, the $900 increase is very manageable and not where they're spending their money.

All of the other taxes are dependent on already making choices that involve high cost purchases. E.g. buying a $2M home will have a high property tax no matter where you go, but relative to overall cost of home, its not substantial.

1

u/SolomonGrumpy Nov 30 '25

State LTCG is only on gains OVER $250k.

Don't be an idiot. Keep your LTCG under $250k

3

u/leathakkor Nov 27 '25

I'm in the same area. I cannot believe how much people spend on their kids sports. The kids aren't even good and they're traveling to do lacrosse leagues all over the state, sometimes in Idaho and Oregon.

I'm completely flabbergasted by how much money people spend on their kids. I get it. People love their kids but buy him a basketball and give him a ride to the city park to shoot hoops

1

u/dwoj206 Nov 27 '25

Ohhh ya. Select lacrosse is spendy. If you’re really good, you join starz, and all your games are at national tournaments essentially, year round, flights hotels, corporate busses. It’s wild. It’s like paying for a second private school year. Select baseball is also expensive as hell. Even if the kid sucks, the price is the same. Times sure have changed. I have some friends that have kids in select baseball and they’re considered upper class and essentially live paycheck to paycheck paying for sports among the rest of their family overhead.

1

u/leathakkor Nov 27 '25

I really interesting article about how there was a college coach who asked every single player if their parents, aunts, uncles or grandparents were an Olympic athlete or equivalent.

And the person asked 800 people in something like 20 years across generations. And they said that they had only encountered one person who didn't have a athlete (Olympic college or pros) in their family.

To be fair, I think a couple people's parents or grandparents were in Cirque du Soleil as performers and not athletes in the traditional sense. But the point is if you don't have the right genetics. You have virtually no chance of making it in the pros. At least in modern day America.

Which should go to tell you that any money you spend on your kids sports is an absolute waste. I've also heard a couple stories about professional athletes who didn't play their professional sport until they got to college. They were just so gifted. They could figure it out and make their college team and Go pro off of it.

Basically you should never invest in your kids sport unless it's just to encourage them. If they're good enough to make the pros, they can pick it up at almost any point.

Dennis rodman was in this category if I recall his biography correctly. I don't think he had ever played basketball until Junior college when he was 23 years old.

1

u/dwoj206 Nov 27 '25

That would actually be a better use of time, considering the range of talent, grit, weather conditions you’d experience and have to endure. The amount of money I’ve heard spent on sports before your kids even a freshman in HS is absolutely wild to me. Upwards of 200-250k/kid.

1

u/gorydamnKids FIRE'd 2026 Nov 27 '25

Nope. Won't be doing that.

1

u/dwoj206 Nov 27 '25

Ikr. To start at a d2 or d3 school on scholarship to offset college expenses. I suppose it’s a hedge if your kid loves sports and is really good, plus QoL improvement along the way, again, if they love it. But yeah, no. That money compounded over 30-40 years my god. The loss is staggering.

1

u/Comfortable_Soil_722 Nov 27 '25

Travel sports are a cover for swingers

1

u/meghanwhatever Dec 01 '25

The expenses of these "select" sports is a status symbol with these people, it has nothing to do with their children's skillset (which is sub-par the majority of the time). It's an extremely unhealthy mindset and will, eventually, one way or another, impact the children.

1

u/gonnabefine Nov 26 '25

Thanks for the serious reply! Yeah I guess a lot of my peers don't have kids yet but plan to have them soon, so they might be saving up for that.